The Project and The Plan

I have been in Seattle since August 10th and am starting to find a bit of rhythm. What am I doing here and what is the plan with Romania and the dream of helping people that no one else is helping? Excellent questions and will do my best to answer them. Pieces I am still working out. For now, I will be having Seattle as my home base. There seem to be options for me here as the rest of my project get developed.

Romania and Solid Rock Youth Ranch - As you know, I love Romania and felt like I belonged. This means it will be on my effort to return there as soon as possible. As for the project with Solid Rock Youth Ranch, Scott and Carolyn and I came to the conclusion that while we have a similar dream and idea, we are different enough that partnering together will divert energy away from the project and helping the kids. Meaning that we would spend more time working on being of one mind than spending time getting the work going. Scott and Carolyn are continuing to move forward with the project in Romania, although it will require a long time to develop. I will continue to be available to them and help in anyway that works.

What does that mean for me? I am kind of back at the drawing board and am grieving the loss of "a way" to get the dream done. Recently I was directed to a unique boarding school near Santa Barbara California that believes combining excellent education with mountains, horses, art and sports create good leaders and well rounded individuals. This particular school caters to the wealthy, although I thought it would work excellently for urban poor kids. And it could be a great idea for Romania. Just another idea to explore.

I haven't lost sight of my dream, I am just working on making a living in such a way that I can be flexible and continue to find ways to live out my passion of helping people no one else is helping. In Seattle I have gotten involved in three different projects, which could turn into more. Two are with Bakke Graduate University and one is consulting with a very interesting business start up.

Bakke Graduate University: is a Christian University whose origins is a School of Theology where they strive to transform cities through the development of leaders who work with both the rich and the poor. Their motto is: Transformational Leadership for the Global City. They recently started an MBA program to help pastors and other urban leaders serve their communities through business and creating work. I am teaching two classes for them: 1) Principles of Management 2) Organizational Behavior, Conflict Resolution and Cross Cultural Communications. Bakke is working to be a global school and the theology school is virtually all over the world with a very strong presence in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Right now the business school is in Seattle, Hong Kong and Manilla. Yes, I get to go to these places to teach. Not bad, eh? I need a PhD to teach more so am looking at a PhD program at the University of Washington.

One of the other projects I am working on for Bakke is creating a certificate program that teaching basic business skills (entrepreneurial) to what I call marginalized and oppressed groups. Right now we are exploring this with Native American Indians (those without the benefit of casinos), inmates (prisoners) and ex-convicts, as well as with the urban and rural poor. It will be looking at how to fund the certificate as well as what kind of curriculum (and a cycle of teachers) and accreditation issues. The goal is to do a pilot of it here in Seattle area and expand the certificate program all over the world.

Consulting with Direct Access is the third project. Direct Access is a small start up that provides services to inmates such as mailing books and magazines to them and it would like to expand in helping inmates mail things to their friends and families. There are many interesting nuances to working with the federal and state prison institutions. The founder is an ex-prisoner who was released three years ago and wanted to find a legitimate way of making money. I am working with another gentleman to help this founder get the work done for this growing business as well as teach the founder (mentor and coach) to manage and understand a growing business. The founder was so overwhelmed with clients that he shut down for several weeks causing much chaos and upheaval. We are also working with him to get through the crisis and rebuild relationships with his customers.

It is a fascinating project and intersects with the other two projects I am doing with Bakke. And it is giving me a practical base for my own dream as well as a PhD.

Romania - While I may not move back there right away, I want to spend several months a year there working more with NetWorks and seeing how my school idea (residential school integrating excellent education with horses, mountains, art and sports) might be of service in Romania. NetWorks also does micro enterprise activities helping people figure out how to do a business and I would like to see if the projects I am working on here with the curriculum can be of use to the work of NetWorks.

Seattle - I haven't taken many photos yet, been too busy trying to figure out where to make my home base and what to do. I do have a couple of favorites to share with you.

Sign by Lake Washington on the "beach"

a five foot strip of sand that spans about 30 feet.

(Couldn't figure out how to rotate the photo so you could read it better)

Lake Washington looking at where Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft lives.

I will keep you posted as things develop and as I take more pictures of Seattle. Several future blog posting will be an effort to show what America is like to my friends in Romania who don't have the chance to visit and see for themselves.